Countryside View (Close)

A sight to gladden one's heart... Piers Morgan riding a Segway, going arse over tit and breaking three ribs. Shame it wasn't his neck but, still, you've got to take your thrills where you can get them...


Stay tuned, folks, the much requested Simon Cowell - Bull Elephant technicolor anal violation clip will be coming along ASAP!!!

That Was The Week That Was

Up The Hoops!

Way-hey! Last week was a bit of a brammer, got up to loads of different things under cover of (at times) some very nice weather. Off work for most of it as well, splendid.

• Started playing footy again last Monday and didn't make a complete arse of myself - many thanks to Breza, Paulo, Fraser et al for their kind attendance. Such care in the community schemes are virtually the only thing these days that can tempt the old fella away from his sofa, the neighbour, and the binoculars...

• Continuing on a football theme, Accies are still unbeaten atop the first division as I type with a mightily impressive 100% record. At last the bookies are now taking them seriously as title contenders but not before old Uncle Mex got his foot in the door at 14-1... Would gladly have toddled along to see them ride Thistle at Firhill last Saturday but was otherwise engaged (q.v.). Also, apparently a couple of clubs from Glesga did quite well during the week and qualified for some European league thing but I'm not quite up to speed on junior football so we'll say nowt more, eh ?
  

• Was in London on Wednesday helping some friends out with research (not on Labrador cloning, Dave) that they were doing but somehow managed to make a total balls up of my main mission... visiting the giant squid on display at the natural history museum. Bugger! I'm going down again to see Rush in October so will have to make a date with it then... what? Stop that laughing at the back!

• Saw a fantastic little movie at the GFT last Thursday, Daft Punk's Electroma. Beautifully shot retro futuristic weirdness with zero dialogue, a DP special wacked-out ambient electro disco soft rawk pastiche soundtrack, and rampant echoes of Westworld abounding. Skimpy little plot, and probably a little too long but I'm so glad I caught it. Modern Sci-fi cinema needs a bolt from left field to kick it up the bracket...

Connect Four

Went to the Connect festival on Saturday up at Inverary Castle by Loch Fyne. Different type of thing from my usual festival attendance habits... but, I have to say, it really was utterly blooming ace. What a fantastically beautiful venue for starters. The weather was a bit single fish but the setting looked arguably all the better for it, the moments of gloom giving off that classic old Scottish melancholic feel with the mist rolling in over the green hills. The crowd was pretty damn cool as well, a healthy mix of gender and ages with a lovely benign and friendly feel about it - T in the Park without the wankers, as one wag on the bus put it. Huge amount of gorgeous indie chicks in attendance, always a good thing for the general ambience. A seriously well laid on event, too, plenty of interesting festival stalls, a great (and wide) selection of food and bevvy, and close proximity to the beautiful little village on the shores.

Anyway, I ostensibly went to see the Moggies near the top of the bill at the end of the night... and they were pretty feckin' sensational as they always are, tho' the outdoor setting didn't really help them out in their mission of quiet-loud-quiet-loud aural destruction as the wind and rain and wide open spaces do tend to get in the way (BTW, much thanks must go to the lovely young folk standing beside me who kindly passed me the bong helped keep the spirits high during the set). Anyway, they were worth the admission price on their own if you ask me so everything else was a bonus...

For the rest of the time, I caught a good old mix of a few other different sounds as well while I was up there. The Divine Comedy were most entertaining and pretty funny to boot, Four Tet with Steve Reid in the dance tent was fairly, erm, interesting (and at least some of the time in a good way), and the Rilo Kiley were way better than I expected any relatively recent NME cover stars to be- I have to say at this point that their lovely singer Jenny has a really great voice and a marvellous set of pins, always a winning combination for me...

Anyway, if it's on next year, I will be back, it's an absolute must. Christ, if they could just huckle King Crimson or Can onto the bill, I'd be in absolute hog heaven. Seriously.

Made with the help of -

Black Sabbath "Asbury Park 1975" (Bootleg) - A glorious racket for playing while on a bus, on the A83, at two o'clock on a Sunday morning. Perfect.

I've Got a Golden Ticket !!!

Yes, it's true! I have! It came through in the post on Saturday...



In keeping with the Willie Wonka allusion, Sabbath Heaven and Hell themselves will be featuring a singer who could quite easily be mistaken for a wee Oompa-Loompa...

The rain in (erm, North Berwick) falls mainly on the plane(s)...

Had a lovely day out last Saturday at the Museum of Flight over at East Fortune to watch their annual air show. Beautiful little place doing sterling work looking after marvellous old planes, it's a wee slice of heaven for anyone with lurking jet-boy propeller-head tendencies (guilty). The weather was half decent (for the most part), the bacon butties were tasty, tho', sadly, the doughnuts were scandalously AWOL... I worship and adore the old kites they have on static display and in bits in the maintenance hanger. In fact, I still get a cheap thrill from walking by the huge Vulcan bomber that they have sitting outside the main building (sighs)... what a commotion that old girl would have made in her heyday...

Anyway, as for the show, the Red Arrows are always good fun and there was plenty of old prop goodness (including a wonderful old Lancaster) but, for me, the undisputed highlights where elsewhere... For starters, a mighty, twin rotored Chinook gave a rare air show performance for us and it truly was an extraordinary sight... like some ungainly Glasgow bus being dangled around the sky on two strings by an unseen, celestial puppet master. How the hell does it stay in the air? Beautiful noise it made, too, like some giant bizarro stealth Flymo. No, really. The other wonder was the Typhoon, which came on right at the end of the day as the heavens opened up and the rain started hissing down. What a glorious racket it made, especially when the hammer was being put down, a sound like the very fabric of the sky itself being ripped apart. In fact, it moved so much air that half a dozen alarms went off in the car park as it made its nearest low level pass. That awesome, bassy roar it eminated when at full tilt scythed its way mercilessly through the chests of the agog spectators, a feeling going so deep that it shook their very ancestors right down to their bones, I tell you... Give me a live album of that every week... Heavy metal bursting through the sky indeed...

BTW, that pic I've posted isn't one of mine, sadly. I did buy myself a camera recently but have been struggling to get to grips with it. Yes, yes, the lens keeps steaming up when I try and snap my favourite subject, har de har. Ach, f*** it, insert your own tripod jokes here...

Made with the help of -

Galaga '88 - Super cutesy graphics, ridiculously silly sound effects, some lovely music, gormless little aliens saying "Ohto ohto!" to you, and the inevitable classic old skool shooter game play, that's galactic dancin' for ya! What's not to love ?

Hmm, I've had that same problem with flaps myself....

No, that isn't a pic of the latest big game I've shot hanging from the wall in the trophy room here in the fortress of bolloxtude - it's a pic of a silly big dog that got its silly big teddy bear head caught in a cat flap. I've been very remiss in posting those stories of canine stupidity that I'd previously promised my readers before so hopefully this will go some way to redressing the balance...



Speaking of tight, little flaps with a black, furry protrusion (pah, why go for the double entendre when a single one can do so much better ?) my lovely Bavarian neighbour was nicking about in the altogether yet again this morning. Marvellous. I was down at the local library a bit later and contemplated picking up a book I spotted,"German in fifteen minutes". Fifteen minutes ??? I'd only need two minutes. At most. To paraphrase Alan B'stard - "Two minutes ? I'm not doing it twice !!!"

Made with the help of -

Robert Fripp "Exposure" - Tee hee, see what I did there ??? Anyway, far too good an album to be relegated to use as a mere pun on a throwaway blog entry...

How we used to live...

Okay, I was a wee bit late to the whole MAME party, mainly through the fact that I'd been keeping a P133 alive for the best part of ten years, a situation due in no small part to being too tight to upgrade my heartfelt concern for the environment - the old bird struggled enough emulating a PC Engine (with the sound turned off and the frame rate w-a-a-ay down) that I rightly felt it would be rather a waste of time getting it to try and crunch its way through the arcade version of Chase HQ...

However, I finally got around to getting myself up to speed the other week at long, long last and have had an absolute whale of a time gouging my way through stacks and stacks of the old classics... Out Run, Salamander, Gryzor, et cetera ... but the current favourite has to be the mighty Green Beret. I'd forgotten how good that old girl was, bringing back all those hours I'd spent down Sweaty Betty's every other weekend trying to get past the end of that second level (bah, making those lovely doggies the end of level baddies is not playing fair with the big chap, boo hiss). Anyhoo, got to be still worth a look to any discerning gamers out there... jeez, a couple of hours knifing and / or flamethrowing some pesky Russians doesn't half make a chap hungry... note to self : must remember to dig out "Raid over Moscow"...


BTW I - if anyone au fait with POW rescue behind Soviet lines is looking at this, please let me know how the hell you kill the paragliding karate bastard who parachutes in with his smart arse machine gun every so often from level 2 onwards ??? He's no danger but I keep missing the fucker with my rocket launcher and he jumps off before I can get down and knife him in the cojones...

BTW II - on a completely unrelated note, it seems the TV Cream blog bloke is an old school Genesis fan as well... nice work, fella

The Bam Flies Down (On) Old Trafford Way

Flew down to Manchester on Saturday, on a nice wee de Havilland Dash 8, no less - thankfully the weather was nice, those ickle prop planes don't half move around when a wind gets up. Anyhoo, I was going down to see G*n*s*s at Old Trafford so wasn't all that worried about the prospect of hitting the ground at 500mph and meeting a fiery death. After all, I had the Drum Duet to "look forward" to. Yes, I was trying not to look forward at all - mucho "what the f*** were you thinking, ya big fud" moments ever since I bought the tix. Oh dear...

However, things got much better once I got down there. The weather was scorching hot, the hotel was a little beauty and the folk I met down there were all pretty damn top notch - those folk from oop north are the salt of the earth, they really are. Plenty of Scots around as per usual, adding to the healthy bonhomie you find amongst groups of balding old fart proggers of all persuasions. What a magnificent stadium, I have to say. Enormous. I was up in the gods back in the east stand facing the stage and had a good, if somewhat distant, view of the proceedings. Heck, as a theatre of dreams it maybe even trumps the mighty Douglas Park but, hey, let's not get too carried away here...

Well, what about the band then ? Er, um, they were pretty damn good, actually. Not enough old stuff for the big man's liking, of course, but it was all rather pleasant, mucho well played light prog goodness abounding. Old Phil really is a talented little fella and should be highly praised for the services he's done for the standing of baldy auld bawbags all across the world. Not a great deal of Peter-era stuff, sadly, or even much old Phil stuff - although they played Ripples and Los Endos from my favourite album (which at least gave me a cheap thrill) most of the set was Duke onwards as wearily expected. Ho hum. I did find my mind wandering during the longueurs to visions of the stadium filled to the brim on a normal business day to watch ManYoo stuffing seven past Roma or going toe to toe with the real Reds. Now that would have been something to savour. But, ultimately, the Genesis lads did all right in the end (there, I can even bring myself to type their name!). I know what I like (in their back catalogue). And at least they didn't play anything off Abacab, right ???

Made with the help of -

Justice "†" - I'm still down with the kids, I tell ya. Anyways, how could I not like a band that plays in front of a giant, illuminated cross ???